Making Maps Faster and Smarter with H3

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make property search not just simpler, but faster.

Recently, we’ve been working on a big upgrade to how our maps and travel time searches work behind the scenes. It involves something called H3 - a clever way of dividing the world into a grid of hexagons. This is helping us do a few things we think you’ll appreciate as a homebuyer.

Why we did this

Traditionally, showing travel times on a map means using lots of complex polygons. These are basically outlines telling the app “this area is within an hour of Waterloo” or “you can cycle here in 30 minutes.” But polygons are slow. They’re hard for computers to process quickly and every time you tweak your search, everything has to be recalculated.

With H3, we can break the country into small hexagonal cells, each tagged with information - like how long it takes to get there. That makes everything faster to load and simpler to combine with other filters. So less time waiting, more time checking out new places.

What this means for your search

If you’ve used our travel time search recently, you might have noticed:

• Maps load faster, even when you pick big time ranges or multiple transport modes.
• Hexagons on the map show clear shading for how long it takes to get to each area.
• You can hover over any individual hexagon to see exactly how many minutes it is from your chosen location.

We’ve also been testing different levels of detail depending on your search:

• Walking times show smaller hexagons for more precision.
• Driving or public transport uses larger cells to keep things speedy.
  

How it works (the simple version)

Every place on earth can be represented as a unique hexagon. H3 uses 16 different “zoom levels,” from giant cells the size of a country down to tiny ones the size of a front garden.

When you do a search, we grab all the relevant hexagons that match your criteria and tag each one with how long it takes to get there. Because everything’s already indexed, your results can appear almost instantly.

What’s next

One of the things we’re exploring is multi-location searches. Imagine searching for places that are within an hour of your office, 45 minutes of your partner’s and a few hours from your parents.

That’s trickier than it sounds. Combining multiple travel times on a single map, with different transport modes and hexagon sizes, isn’t straightforward. But the goal is the same: to help you see the real trade-offs of living somewhere, without having to cross-reference a dozen apps.

We’re also looking at how to show other types of location data - like noise levels, walkability, or green space - using the same hexagonal approach.

Why this matters

Moving house is already a bit of a mental load. We think your search tools should take some of that complexity off your shoulders.

Using H3 makes it easier for us to:

• Show more data layers without slowing everything down.
• Let you combine travel time and lifestyle filters seamlessly.
• Keep the whole experience snappy, even on older devices.

Because the faster you can explore, the faster you can focus on what actually matters: deciding if this is somewhere you’d want to call home.